half-hearted
Britishadjective
Other Word Forms
- half-heartedly adverb
- half-heartedness noun
Explanation
Use the adjective half-hearted to describe someone whose heart is not really in what they are doing. If you're a half-hearted member of your school marching band, you're not very excited about playing your tuba during halftime at football games. You might show up for awkward family dinners with your strange cousins, but you don't look forward to it and you can't wait until it's over. You're a half-hearted participant, and when your weird relatives leave, you probably give a half-hearted wave goodbye. The word can also be spelled "halfhearted."
Vocabulary lists containing half-hearted
Idioms and Expressions, List 3
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Eleven
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You Bring the Distant Near
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
So by those standards, what the California Highway Patrol discovered when they pulled over a driver in the carpool lane in West Covina recently would be half-hearted.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 17, 2026
A few half-hearted boos was the extent of it.
From BBC • Aug. 31, 2025
Instead, mitigation was uneven and half-hearted, stoking frustration without effectively preventing spread of the disease, and paving the way for the backlash that followed.
From Salon • Mar. 14, 2025
A half-hearted fan protest before and during last weekend's 2-0 loss by Arsenal at the King Power Stadium underlined the struggle to mount a consistent revolt.
From BBC • Feb. 21, 2025
Her mouth puckered in a way that made me think she was making a half-hearted attempt to keep her satisfaction hidden.
From "The Red Car to Hollywood" by Jennie Liu
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
